A letter grade is displayed in the window of a restaurant in Los Angeles County. JILL L.. REED, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Food poisoning facts

Food-borne illness is considered greatly underreported, according to the county's Health Care Agency. People who get sick often don't seek medical attention or their illness may be caused by pathogens that are not routinely tested for.

Last year, the county received 20 reports of food-borne outbreaks. It qualifies as such only if two or more people from separate households are sickened from the same place. Restaurants are most often the source.

In 2013, 523 restaurants in Orange County were closed for serious health hazards including: vermin, sewage overflow, lack of warm water for hand-washing and food-borne illness outbreak. The hazard must be corrected before the restaurant can reopen.

– COURTNEY PERKES/The Register

I was planning to review a restaurant in Newport Beach this week. Instead, I got food poisoning there. Everyone at my table got sick. Unspeakably sick. For days. It was awful.

As the sickness intensified, I went online and looked up health inspection reports for the restaurant. Inspections are a matter of public record, but nobody ever looks at them. Guess what I found? This place has received a serious violation on every one of its inspections since opening two years ago. Coincidence?

If this restaurant had opened in Los Angeles instead of Newport Beach, it would have to display a letter grade of C, or possibly B, in the front window – and I never would have dined there. But because it is in Orange County, there's no indication whatsoever that this place has been cited repeatedly for problems that pose very serious and immediate health risks to its customers.

It's time to restart the debate about letter grades for restaurant health inspections in Orange County.

I've been reviewing restaurants in Orange County for a little more than a year now, and I've been poisoned on four separate occasions. This most recent case was by far the worst.

I worked as a restaurant critic in Los Angeles for 10 years. I always made a point of not reviewing restaurants with a grade lower than A. And I got sick only twice. Another coincidence?

Restaurants in Orange County are allowed to repeatedly fail their inspections without any consequences. They can “fix” the problem – but not the underlying behavior or lackadaisical mentality – and be back in business in a matter of minutes. Even in instances where the health department shuts down a restaurant and revokes its permit, the restaurant can go buy a new one and be right back in business, sometimes the same day.

The placards currently displayed in restaurant windows in Orange County are useless. A restaurant might pass inspection by the skin of its teeth, with serious repeat violations, yet it gets the exact same placard as a restaurant that receives a near-perfect score. That's messed up. That's why I got sick.

In 2008, Orange County came close to adapting a letter-grade system similar to the ones used effectively in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Riverside, New York, Philadelphia and many other places. The Orange County Grand Jury looked into the matter and, after hearing extensive testimony from consumers and restaurateurs, strongly recommended adapting a letter-grade or color-coded system that would give consumers a clearer picture of every restaurant's health score. County health inspectors backed the idea. This paper wrote extensively about the process and determined that if Orange County were to institute a letter-grade system, roughly 40 percent of the restaurants here would fail to score an A.

For anyone who has forgotten the story, let me recap:

The Orange County Restaurant Association lobbied hard against letter grades. Supervisor Janet Nguyen (whose husband as well as her then-chief of staff both own restaurants) urged her colleagues to vote against any changes, arguing that even minor tweaks would be “really devastating to restaurant owners.” She said the system isn't broken, so there's no need to fix it.

Here are the arguments put forth by opponents of letter grades:

Argument 1: Letter grades would be unfairly punitive to restaurants.

Is it punitive to tell a restaurant to fix its rat or cockroach problem? No. Is it punitive to warn a restaurant's customers that the restaurant has a rat problem? No. Is it punitive to slap a restaurant with a B or C grade because it doesn't maintain safe temperatures for its food? No. Requiring restaurants to abide by the health code and maintain clean, safe kitchens is not punitive. It's common sense. Restaurants in Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere don't lose their coveted A for running out of toilet paper or for a cook getting caught drinking from the wrong type of cup. They get the dreaded Bs and Cs for serious violations, for food being held at poisonous temperatures, for washing dishes in cold water, for meat and vegetables prepared on the same surface. These are the kinds of things that make people sick. Really sick. And if we let problems like these go unchecked, with no more than a slap on the wrist and a wink – in private, with no consequences – the problems will continue.

Argument 2: A better system would be too costly for restaurants.

This was also debunked. It was determined that instituting letter grades would raise the annual fees levied upon restaurants by $7. Big deal. Yet, Supervisor Nguyen continued to assert that even the smallest changes would be devastating. Well, the sky didn't fall in L.A. or San Francisco or New York when letter grades were introduced. Things actually improved.

Argument 3: Inspectors are racists who treat immigrant entrepreneurs more harshly than longtime residents or larger corporations like McDonalds or Burger King.

This was one of the most salacious boogeyman arguments for keeping the current system. Under a stricter system, it was argued, inspectors would become corrupt and try to shake down restaurant owners at every opportunity. Of course there was no proof that anything like this has happened in Orange County. This was nothing but fear-mongering.

Argument 4: The current system works. There's no need to fix what's not broken.

Not broken? Forty percent of our restaurants would fail to score an A, and the system is not broken?

Ultimately, the supervisors ignored the Grand Jury and the health inspectors and voted 3-2 against adapting a new system. The supervisors who voted “no” for letter grades were Nguyen, Norby and Patricia Bates. Nguyen and Bates are still on the board, but Norby is not.

I propose it's time to restart this debate. The system still doesn't work. It's time to fix it.

How many more people need to get sick before something is done? Restaurants must be compelled to care about their ongoing hygiene and food-safety practices.

Look, I'm not saying that restaurants in Orange County are willfully trying to sicken their customers. Nobody thinks that's the case. But restaurants in Orange County simply do not fret their inspections because they know it's easy to get a do-over when they fail – and the consumer will never have to know. Oops. Carry on.

When letter grading began in Los Angeles in 1998, only 40 percent of restaurants scored an A in the first round. A few years after that, the number of A ratings skyrocketed to 82 percent. Hospitalization due to food-borne illness dropped nearly 14 percent. The same thing happened in New York.

Bottom line: When consumers are provided better exposure to restaurant hygiene scores, two things happen – best practices dramatically improve across the system, and the number of people getting sick declines. Those are the facts.

We, the diners, deserve better. We deserve to know, upfront, without any confusion or doubt, exactly how every restaurant has scored on its latest surprise inspection. It's time for letter grades.

Editor's note: The Register is not identifying the restaurants involved in this report. Because nearly half of Orange County restaurants would not receive an A under the letter-grade system, the problem addressed here is widespread. Rather than single out specific eateries for violations, the goal of this column is to show a systemwide problem. Restaurant inspections are available for the public at ocfoodinfo.com

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